About stopping and fixing problems, did anybody have had this kind of experience?

1. Working on Feature A, stopped by management or by the customer because we need Feature B as soon as possible.

2. Working on Feature B, stopped because there is Emergency C in production due to something that you warned the customer about months ago but there was no time to stop, analyze and fix.

3. Deployed a workaround and created issue D to fix it properly.

4. Postponed issue D because the workaround is deemed to be enough, resumed Feature B.

5. Stopped Feature B again because either Emergency E or new higher priority Feature F. At this point you can't remember what that original Feature A was about and you get a feeling that you're about to forget Feature B too.

6. Working on whatever the new thing is, you are interrupted by Emergency G that happened because that workaround at step 3 was only a workaround, as you correctly assessed, but again, no time to implement the proper fix D so you hack a new workaround.

Maybe add another couple of iterations but at this time every party are angry or at least unhappy of each other party.

You have a feeling that the work of the last two or three months on every single feature has been wasted because you could not deliver any one of them. That means that the customer wasted the money they paid you. Their problem, but it can't be good for their business so your problem too.

The current state of the production system is "buggy and full of workarounds" and it's going to get worse. So you think that the customer would have been wiser to pause and fix all the nastier bugs before starting Feature A. We could have had a system running smoothly, no emergencies, and everybody happier. But no, so one starts thinking that maybe the best course of action is changing company or customer.

Symptoms of a dysfunctional company where communication has broken down, everyone with any authority is running around EXACTLY like a headless chicken, waving around frantically (giving orders). Margins are probably thin as a razor, or non-existent. They will micromanage your work time to death. You will be treated as a commodity factory machine and if you start using your brain to solve actual problems, you will be chastised. Deadlines everywhere keep everyone's brain shut off and in panic mode. No time to properly engineer anything. Nobody has the time to check anyone else's work, causing "trust" that isn't even blind, just foolish. You as the software guy end up debugging and fixing EVERYONE's mistakes. When the bug is in hardware/electronics, everyone knows who's actually to blame, but everyone still expects YOU to fix it, and they're immensely disappointed when you can't save the day.

These places cannot and will not change. If you can, find employment elsewhere.

Yes, it's a leadership failure and probably time to go, it only gets worse. In my experience. It's a vicious cycle where, as velocity slows, inexperienced leadership gets more and more panicked and starts frantically rearranging projects, features and people in desperate attempts to fix the problem, obviously exacerbating the communication breakdown and gridlock further. It also builds resentment and can turn pretty toxic as everyone starts just looking out for themselves.

This is not uncommon but I've mostly managed to avoid it, because it's a management failure. There is a delicate process of "managing the customer" so that they get a result they will eventually be satisfied with, rather than just saying yes to whatever the last phone call was.

Yes, usually not worth it to spend too much time on proper engineering if the company is still trying to find a product-market fit and you will be working on something else or deleting the code in a few months.

> did anybody have had this kind of experience?

Yes, the issue is not you, it's a toxic workplace. Leave as soon as you can.